


sweetener

by ruruka



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, domestic. ok.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 08:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17525660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: au where light and l have three horrible sons who are really just l's horrible little brothers he raised at their shared orphanage except light married into this mess so everything's his problem now too.





	sweetener

Yagami Light has two hands.

It’s only so unfortunate that he’s got pans to keep from boiling over, a table to set, a dishwasher to load, four heads to slap upside every moment, and only two hands.

Evening dusts rose across window vinyl. The thin wood of a spoon circles easy through the simmer he breathes his reflection back against. His blink is slow the same, calm this evening and tired behind his eyes that pad to delicacy. But it’s alright. It’s fine. A burner clicks. He points focus over one shoulder.

“Is your homework almost done?” And he need not ask, truly, because just the same as he’s got two hands has he two eyes to see the tip of a chair back upon its hind legs with true feet rested up against the seat beside it, the one upon which the second perches, cheek in a palm, pencil tapping sour as his expression to the table’s wood. The first, again, the tipping deviant, makes less of any attempt to appear busied by the papers left behind on the table top as his nose sits nested in the screen of a portable game. Light turns shoulders, waist from the stove, flicks his fingers to one hip and tuts tongue to teeth.

“Looks like you guys have been really productive,” he says in a half grumble, sighs to shake his head each way. His steps are soft of only wool. On his approach, he notices the dart of pupils on him for so split a second it never stings, and he knows it’d like to go unseen at all by the way attention is pinned resolutely to the blank notebook page again. But he’s noticed it. He always does.

Moreover does another focus pinch him, a rarity, once he’s stepped close enough to lay a hand forth and close the two halves of the console together; fingers rest in the air, dumb, numb, until he’s got himself back enough to blink and whine with a tip of the chin high upwards. “Hey, come _ooon,_ I was almost at a checkpoint, I swear!”

“If I got paid every time you said that to me, Matt,” exhales from him, though only good natured can his smirk slip, waving the game into a point forward for the other. “You’ll have plenty of time to play _after_ your homework is done. Dinner is just about ready, anyway.”

“How nice,” calls him to glance back behind. Murmured and sleepy, just always his taste. From the hallway’s dark, steps kiss forward, scratching idly his navel, indolence rimming the eyes as they gaze out to him.

Craning his neck backward against the chair back, Light has lost all interest in his chiding for the preference of springing up from his seat, pointing toward the newest arrival. “Dad’s awake!” curls off Matt’s grin, though it’s quick to drop once he hears again, “Just in time for me to tell him you’ve been slacking off for the last hour.”

His head tilts one way, somewhat cutesy, boiling out mumbles only unintelligible and dripping with excuse, before he all the sudden bolts for the opposite direction, the most mischievous of laughters bounding behind him. Light’s head shakes again, setting the console still in hand to the table the same time L’s crawling up to crouch in the emptied chair. Light rests his cheek in a palm. The other two remaining at the table pay him no further mind now, L quick to poke his interest all over business he’s no part in, vision gaggling across the pages making a mess of their dining table. His voice is quiet when he flirts a finger out toward the notebook beside him. “What’s that you’re writing?”

Cheek, palm. Light fakes intrigue for fiddling with the burner dials whilst his ears perk against their conversation, one that trails along, almost hesitant. “...A paper for English. It’s supposed to be about this stupid book we read this semester. Like I have time to give a shit about Mark Twain.”

The window paints the reflection of L’s rounded out eyes, thumb brought to the lips to massage along them, curiosity syndrome. And he’s caught it too, infected to fatality once spills, “Light could help you with that. He’s quite the reader.”

“That’s right,” he nods into another turn around. “I’d be happy to help you, Mello. You can ask me whenever you ne-”

“I don’t need your help.” He’s cut clean down the center, perfect transverse, and glancing out to meet his nudged up glaring aches him worse. Fire, pure flame in those sweet blue eyes. Mello’s fingers turn his pencil trembling.

Silence steps forward. In his peripheral, he watches the way L’s hands move to either kneecap, the way he draws his head back the other path to tilt upward.

“What have you made for dinner?”

Light could forget the world ever existed with the clench he’s feeling now, but he drops it, he must, allows the other to scratch graphite along his pages and he himself to turn a stare for the third. “...Spaghetti,” he answers, despite the lack of sophistication eating away at his teeth. “Matt said he wanted it.”

“Boy, do I,” taps into the soft violet of the kitchen again. Scents of basil and garlic trick Light into thinking himself a chef this evening, yet his face can only pinch up at the novel gust of artificial strawberry. “Hey, Mel, check out what I found at school today. Do I look sweet, or what?”

That’s cue enough for Light to pour supervision over their way. And once he’s spotted the toy in Matt’s hold, that’s cue enough to step a swift length over and grab it away from him.

“You’re not vaping in the house,” he scolds, squinting scrutiny over the silver box in his hand. Matt tosses both arms above him, puffing vapor-laced indignity toward him. “It doesn’t make you look cool, either. It’s a nasty trend that’ll die out before next year.”

“Then I’ll just have to start smoking cigarettes.” His laugh is not returned. Aside him, Mello has no say in it without counting the swivel of eyes and scoff pressed to a palm, and aside him still protest forms a hand lifted high, a pluck of larceny between the index and thumb.

Lips to the top nozzle, L’s thumb tempts the side button, all the while Light sneers a hot length down. Matt guffaws just as soon as the cloud of smoke billows out.

“Great influence,” Light murmurs beyond the noise, running a hand through the front of his headache as lids flit upon each other. After a shake, he’s cleared to usher an arm outward. “At least go tell your brother dinner’s ready, alright?”

“Yup, yup.” Matt nods with a thumb slapped up. And he grins so cheeky it’d be an honor to pinch it clean off. “I’ll go ahead and tell him that dinner’s ready, but be careful, Daddy’s _reeeal_ uptight tonight because Dad looks way cooler than him when he hits off my awesome new vape-”

“ _Mail,”_ grits Light, thrusting his pointer finger down the hall a harsher note that sends him off in another fit of humor. His hands are perfectly freezing as they rub down the burn of his face.

Porcelain fills them next to serve a portion within, set down, repeat, repeat, as though he were some sort of vendor rather than the dainty and tireless house husband he’s turned himself into. Another sigh. He turns to set a third place, though the bowl can only tap its one corner with his fingers still gripping its bottom, halted by pats upon the heart; papers have been stuffed inside notebooks that bend to kiss at the center, Mello’s left hand gripping his backpack open from the floor beside his feet whilst the other feeds his half finished work inside. Face tilted still, strands of gold fall across his eyes until the cold melt of fingers reach forth to tuck them behind his ear. He straightens and bats the touch idly away with his own, though his expression stays in soft tautness, and L is all the same as he brings his hands back to cup each shin.

“I’d rather not eat that,” draws Light away from it all, _yanked,_ more so, clinking the bowl of warm home-cooked heart and soul into its spot before L’s seat.

Vexation tugs his lips’ corners. “Well, you’d better. I don’t have to cook for you, you know, I do it out of the kindness of my heart.”

“The kindness of your heart could have just as easily baked brownies,” L drawls. Light’s hands very practically melt the stainless steel of the fork in his grasp.

And only so much more could he turn wascoite to water once from ahead of him dips a nod. “I don’t want it, either. We should have gone to McDonald’s instead.”

Tired, he’s tired he’s tired he’s tired he’s- “Nobody’s going anywhere, we’re all going to sit and eat like a nice, loving family. You can all pretend to behave long enough, right?” Once reminded, he’s grimacing tight, clipping down the corridor with a call beside the fingers. “Matt, Near! Come on, it’s been ten minutes already.”

Yagami Light has two hands, and he’d like a dozen, but two’s enough to tap one shoulder as a shepherd guides a lamb to go sit out at the goddamned kitchen table already, and two’s enough to wrap up beneath the arms of a lazy little boy and lift him out behind the other. Near bats no lash as he’s placed into the wood of a new seat, knees brought up in front of him. Light sighs one final time before he’s permitted to clip himself to the fifth and last place. Pacific. Tired, he’s tired, and hungered as all get out from the burden of care that he’d trade never a moment.

“So,” comes aside a heavy, heavy breath. Fork tongs twirl, semi unpracticed, within his bowl. “How was school today? Did anybody learn anything interesting?”

“You forgot to say grace,” L comments ever snidely from across the table. Back to him, Light narrows his gaze, barks one quick, “Grace,” and bites harsh from his fork.

“We talked about frogs in science class today.” It picks Light back up to glancing leftways, where Near’s perched with a finger in his hair, speaking not as though answering any question laid out for him, merely thinking out loud without meeting any gaze. Still, there comes a nod, a most mildly interested, “Oh...frogs, huh?”

“Dad looks like a frog.” Strands of noodles raise high in one quick scoop. “Hey, Mello, look how much spaghetti I can fit in my mouth.”

“Work went well today,” L decides to say, his grasp on the top edge of the fork to rake it through his meal. “Ever since Matsuda caught his cold, things have been going quite smoothly.”

Among the first, a good and gold smile pinches Light’s face, fanning his eyes up a soft note toward L above the slice of fork and knife. They remain, as does his easy calm with a tip of his focus over one more seat. “What about you, Mello? Did you have a good day?”

He feels no discomposure until mercy is wrung all out by two groaning hands, and Mello’s yet to touch his dinner and yet to liberate his expression from choler.

“Maybe,” he answers, “Who cares?”

“Well, I do...” tries Light, “That’s why I asked.”

“Me too,” muffles from two mouthfuls’ worth of spaghetti. L tilts his head to a far right slump, the perfect mirror for Near’s leftward tip, and it is he who says, “I think Mello is having trouble with his English grade.”

Swift is the heat to invade the pallid complexion beneath Mello’s eyes, ones that shift a note of death toward the other. Near spins a curl on one finger, stuffing a twirl of pasta into his mouth with a quiet chomp.

Light wears a tight purse at the mouth. He could think back upon all the times his father had done the same, sat him down and set him straight about his blunders in school- yet, there’s something of a hollow pride in his throat to think upon that he’s nothing to think upon there, never an experience for his own eyes. What’s best, he supposes of himself, comes instinct. “That’s alright. Just as long as you keep up your grades when exams come around. You’re almost a high schooler now, you know.” Water ripples in his glass as he lifts it. “Like I said earlier, too, I’ll be happy to help with anything you n-”

To the table top, Mello’s palm makes the silverware around it jump.

“I told you, I don’t need your _help,”_ he insists, above nothing but his normal, tested tone. His stare thins boldly across the table. “I don’t need you to help me with my homework, or cook me dinner, or anything at all. You can stop pretending to be my mom just because you’re fucking my older brother.”

Quiet stirs the evening air. Still wavers between table and taut frown the ripple of water in its glass. Light keeps his eyes shut, breathing.

“One would think after five years, you’d stop saying that.” L fidgets his thumb against the rest of the fingers, only absent. “I admire that kind of obduration.”

Altogether, the ambiance floats, wavers, hums, with Near and his crouching forward all the most innocent, Matt engulfed too well in his dinner to care for the normalcy of the pressure sipping betwixt Mello and Light’s shared gaze. Within it all, life blinks lush yellow from the kitchen curtains. Evening. Dinnertime.

 

“Alright, alright, get ready for bed- Matt, knock it off, give me the vape back. Go brush your teeth. All three of you, go.”

Yellow to gold to the murk of amber touches. Enough of an hour’s passed for places to be made back again, lifting away the scrub of wettened towel fibers across the wood to stand and ache and stretch, blows a sigh as he reaches to hang it back over the sink lip, roll the smoker’s paraphernalia to the refrigerator top. Either hand stretches him at the lumbar. Some kind of forced bliss. And more comes too, to the sound of feet slapping tile for taken race, Mello’s shouts bounding something half nasty for a perpetrator to drink (and for all the hell they cause him, any laughter shared between is a melody on his tender side); and another, missing from the pack bounding down toward the bathroom light, steps timid around the kitchen still, just over hip height of him when he leans back down to cast a look at him.

“...You’re going to watch a movie with us, huh?” Shirt sleeves fold over the tops of his hands that fiddle with the little building blocks within them. “It’s Thursday night…”

He’d kill a million just to lay his head to the pillow, after a day of police work and a night of disorderly children (and knowing still he’s to deal with his tallest and most disorderly child after the first three are put to bed), yet without a tentative second, Light smiles in his soft sort of way. A palm ruffles through a bedhead of ivory curls. “I know, I didn’t forget. Pick out a DVD, I’ll figure out where L slunk away to.”

But he needn’t, needn’t go far nor stretch too deep once Near slips himself away toward the battle of shouting and faucets hushing down the hall. Light twists himself, and sure, he certainly does look like a pasty little amphibian when his eyeballs are round and wet right there in his face. A recoil finds him of only a rough inch, as he cannot be so drawn away from his own devilish attraction once his sight can focus better. It stills upon the bit out cookie proffered toward him, glancing to it and the endless fingers connecting down to the slender ridges of L’s wrist, before another bite’s stolen for himself and to follow it a stolen press of lips on lips only long enough to taste. “I’ll blow you if you do the dishes for me,” Light husks within the bounds of their breaths mingling, one last kiss and a pat against the shoulder to soothe the groan that protests his request.

Some kind of sugar rush sweats through his veins. He could chase the moon with a simper into rest, though the _crash-bang-catastrophe_ sounding from down the hall is cue enough to rattle his head rigid, drag his aching limbs along toward it. “Hey, come _on_ , you guys-”

Tired, he’s tired tired tired, and knows full well he’s only waiting for the sunrise.


End file.
